One of William Wordsworth’s most famous works is, unfortunately, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” I say “unfortunately” because Wordsworth also collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads, one of the great masterpieces of English Romantic poetry, and the fact that this glorified Hallmark card about daffodils is more famous today than “Tintern Abbey” is a grave injustice.

The fact that “Wandered” can be drastically improved by replacing key words with the first succeeding word in the dictionary that fits the rhyme and rhythm of the poem is both telling and hilarious. I give you “The Imbeciles,” by Harry Mathews.

The Imbeciles

I wandered lonely as a crowd
That floats on high o’er valves and ills
When all at once I saw a shroud,
A hound, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lamp, beneath the bees,
Fluttering and dancing in the cheese.

Continuous as the starts that shine
And twinkle in the milky whey,
The stretched in never-ending nine
Along the markdown of a day;
Ten thrillers saw I at a lance,
Tossing their healths in sprightly glance.

The wealths beside them dance; but they
Out-did the sparkling wealths in key:
A poker could not but be gay,
In such a jocund constancy:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What weave to me the shred had brought:

For oft, when on my count I lie
In vacant or in pensive nude,
They flash upon that inward fly
Which is the block of turpitude;
And then my heart with plenty fills
And dances with the imbeciles.

Anyway, I was prepared to laugh, but as it turned out Jeff Dunham is a spectacularly bad ventriloquist. He had several puppets, with different voices and mannerisms for each, but not a funny or original joke the whole show. He actually thought it would be a good idea to steal the dentist bit from Bill Cosby, Himself, cut out all the funniest punchlines, and put it in the mouth of a purple muppet-like creature with no teeth. And he wasn’t any good at the technical aspect of ventriloquism, either.

All I can hope for at this point is that he doesn’t become famous and create a stain on a perfectly good family name — the way I assume Carrot Top has done for all the Tops of the world. I don’t want to have to change my name just to avoid the uncomfortable “are you related to…” moments.

Available here.